%0 Journal Article %J Physical Review B %D 2013 %T Suppression of electron spin decoherence of the diamond NV center by a transverse magnetic field %A Shin, Chang S. %A Avalos, Claudia E. %A Butler, Mark C. %A Wang, Hai-Jing %A Seltzer, Scott J. %A Liu, Ren-Bao %A Pines, Alexander %A Bajaj, Vikram S. %X

We demonstrate that the spin decoherence of nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamond can be suppressed by a transverse magnetic field if the electron spin bath is the primary decoherence source. The NV spin coherence, created in “a decoherence-free subspace,” is protected by the transverse component of the zero-field splitting, increasing the spin-coherence time about twofold. The decoherence due to the electron spin bath is also suppressed at magnetic fields stronger than ∼25 G when applied parallel to the NV symmetry axis. Our method can be used to extend the spin-coherence time of similar spin systems for applications in quantum computing, field sensing, and other metrologies.

%B Physical Review B %V 88 %8 10/2013 %G eng %U http://prb.aps.org/abstract/PRB/v88/i16/e161412 %N 16 %R 10.1103/PhysRevB.88.161412